Welcome to The Daily Sail

Search

Support

Hugh Styles diary

Hyeres proved to be an awkward regatta for Team GBR Tornado aces Hugh Styles and Adam May

Just returned from Hyeres regatta on the coast near to Nice in the south of France. An Olympic classes regatta and a preparation for us for our European championships which begin this coming week in Vilamoura, Portugal.
We arrived for a week's training before the event to get familiar with the sailing conditions and to train against the foreign competition. This event is one of the major regattas of the year and one which all crews which are campaigning for the Olympics try to perform at.
Our week of training went well, we were able to test all the equipment we wanted to. This has enabled us to clarify most of our kit selection for our Europeans. We were particularly happy with our upwind boat speed in the light winds, an area which we have been working on for a while.
Following the preparation we went into the regatta with a good feeling of confidence in our sailing equipment. We were using this regatta to fine tune all our racing skills and we began well, but for an error by the race officer in race 1 when only 3 boats out of the 50 finished the course due to a calm at one mark during the first race.We didn't let this phase us and posted a fourth in the second race, a good positive start to the regatta we were buzzing.
This led us into the second day of racing and two races planned. The wind conditions started to be as fickle as the previous day with light SW winds starting off, this didn't establish for a while and we were kept onshore until more consistent conditions appeared.
The first race of the day was strange for us getting a good start and a reasonable rounding position at the first mark we were in

MEMBERSplease log in to read the full article.

Password sharing is not permitted and is in breach of our Terms of Use